Week 2

HOLY GRACIOUS EVERYBODY.

Goodness, I can't even hardly think of what to write! I feel like every morning when I wake up, my mind gets completely erased of everything that happened the day before. Also, waking up is the hardest part of the day because you open your eyes and realize you have to get up and do it all over again. Don't get me wrong, I love being a missionary, but the schedule here is pretty redundant and boring. We have to make it fun for ourselves but it's hard finding time because every minute is planned out for us. Mom, because you're curious, Colin was pretty much right. The schedule changes a little bit every day but it always goes something like this:

Breakfast,  class, personal study,  language study,  more language study,  gym,  lunch,  personal study,  class,  daily planning,  bed.  We basically sit in a classroom all day. Thank goodness ours has a window so I remember there's an outside world.

Well, a few good things happened this week. We have practice investigators here in the MTC and it's been really hard but really cool. The lessons with Pablo, our investigator, went really well and he committed to be baptized! I know it's fake, but it's true what the teachers say, it's as real as you make it.  Irma Barlow and I were completely invested in it and he was REAL to us so when he said he would get baptized we both may have burst into tears we were so happy and the spirit was so incredible.

He'res a funny story about our investigator, he becomes our teacher the second week! So yeah, this person that we just asked to be baptized was teaching us Portuguese the next day. OH WAIT, it gets better. We had already known about him being our teacher part, so our other teacher Brother Duvall was like, "Yeah, his real name is Jared"
"Do you wanna know his last name..?"
We were like, "uh, well you seem really excited to tell us so, sure...?"
Oh, don't worry. his name is Jared Torgan. Yes. Torgan. as in President Moroni Torgan, the Portugal, Lisbon mission president. Yeah, we just taught the lessons to his son and now his son is teaching us. He's super nice though and he tells us cool stuff about Portugal and we're really lucky to have a native speaker as a teacher. That was pretty much the only exciting thing of the week, I'm sorry. I'll try to remember more things to write about but life here, as spiritual as it may be, is kinda boring.

I love getting mail.  It's the best part of the day so keep it coming and thank you!! You guys, being here is super hard but I still know it's what the Lord wants me to do so I'm trying my hardest to stick with it. Our teachers have to keep reminding Sister Barlow and myself that its only our third week and we're still in the MTC teaching fake investigators because we're really hard on ourselves and we get really stressed about everything. But, it's so good. I've already learned so much Portuguese and more about the gospel and I've gained a lot of insight for myself.  I'm actually doing better than a lot of other people here. Thank goodness. Oh, also, everyone in my branch understands and recognizes that I'm a strong independent black woman, so I feel like they finally understand me.

Well, I'm almost out of time.
I love you all and thank you so much for the prayers and support!

love love love love Irma Dean